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Ruth Video Is Under Further Review

It is Babe Ruth, but maybe not Lou Gehrig. It is probably 1928. And it may just be Sept. 9, part of a doubleheader against the Philadelphia Athletics at Yankee Stadium, rather than an October World Series game against the St. Louis Cardinals.

A newly discovered home film acquired by Major League Baseball Productions shows Ruth playing the outfield, a first for the vast moving-image archive. It also shows Ruth striking out on a check swing, arguing with an umpire and walking away while dragging his bat through the dirt.

The New York Times wrote about baseball’s archive and the Ruth film, which archivists at Major League Baseball had not taken the time to give more than a glance. They simply noted several clues that led them to believe it was shot in 1928.

The Times asked readers to help play archeologist, uncovering and deciphering all the video’s clues to determine exactly when the film was shot and who the Yankees’ opponent was that sunny day.

The response from at-home historians was deep and the speculation wide. Two college professors separately proposed using the shadows of the flag poles (seen on the field) to determine the position of the sun and, with some serious mathematics, the date of the game. Others noted what appears to be a dirigible in the background over the Bronx and suggested locating dirigible flight schedules. Many shared their knowledge of box scores, uniform designs and Yankee Stadium history, and took stabs at various dates and opposing teams.

But none gave it the full scrub like Keith Olbermann, the MSNBC broadcaster and baseball blogger, and Tom Shieber, a senior curator at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.

The two, working separately, came up with the same conclusion. They believe that the game in question took place on Sunday, Sept. 9, 1928. Probably. Nick Trotta, the manager of library licensing for Major League Baseball Productions, said archivists would not be able to devote their attention to the clip until after the World Series but did not dismiss Olbermann and Shieber.

“We haven’t been able to fully process their alike conclusions,” Trotta said in an e-mail message. “But I think they’re going about it in the right way.”

Olbermann and Shieber agree that one quick glance reveals that the game was not opening day, the World Series (where the Yankees beat the Cardinals in 1928) or July 4: That is because there is no bunting. The Yankees loved bunting, and still do, festooning the Stadium for all big games.

Yet this must have been a big day of some sort, because the Yankee Stadium stands were unusually packed. Olbermann found that the biggest crowds of the year that season were on July 1, Aug. 19 and Sept. 9. Newspaper accounts and a box score said that 85,000 were in attendance on Sept. 9.

Video

The Great Bambino Resurfaces

The video collection of Major League Baseball Productions includes about 150,000 hours of footage, including recently discovered film of Babe Ruth.

The opposing team appears to be wearing light-colored caps. Olbermann, citing Marc Okkonen’s book, “Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century,” said that only four teams in 1928 had such caps — the Browns, the Red Sox, the White Sox and the Athletics.

Light-colored caps and a huge crowd? Sept. 9 became the leading candidate. Further cementing that conclusion are box scores that show Ruth struck out in both games of the doubleheader (twice in the opener) and played right field that day. He sometimes played left field, instead, including 55 times in 1928.

Shieber used some other clues, including socks. He concluded that the only road uniform that matched the film, including the dark socks with what appear to be at least one stripe, belonged to the A’s. Like Major League Baseball, he noted that the advertisements in the ballpark shown in the film match photographs in 1928.

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But he also believed that the player on deck, patiently watching Ruth’s post-strikeout demonstration, is not Lou Gehrig, but the taller, lankier Bob Meusel. Shieber’s research shows that the only time that season that Gehrig hit before Ruth, and not after him, was from Aug. 25 to Sept. 20. Sure enough, the Sept. 9, 1928, box score on retrosheet.org showed that Gehrig batted in front of Ruth that day, and Meusel followed.

The Yankees and A’s also played at Yankee Stadium on Sept. 11 and 12, but attendance figures were much lower, further pointing to a sunny Sunday afternoon of Sept. 9.

In his research on Friday, Shieber found an old panoramic image of Yankee Stadium in the Hall of Fame’s National Baseball Library. It is labeled as being shot from right field during the 1928 World Series between the Yankees and the Cardinals.

Demonstrating how tricky it can be to determine the origin of archival footage and photographs, and the folly of presumptions and concrete conclusions, Shieber noted, through the study of uniforms, that the right fielder is clearly not a Yankee or a Cardinal. It appears to be an Athletic.

And the stadium, sans bunting, appears to be packed. Shieber sees it is a wonderful coincidence — that the archived photograph and the newly uncovered home movie were shot on the same day.

Of course, nothing is certain. Assuming that the opposing team truly is the A’s, Olbermann mused that the film could show a game on July 1, “but the crowd isn’t packed enough.”

“Kind of too bad,” he wrote on his blog, at keitholbermann.mlblogs.com. “The A’s rightfielder for both games that day, just barely visible at the end of the film, was Ty Cobb!”